21 Comments

Attributives in dialogueHe's right ... I was asking specifically if he said and she said are appropriate attributives for questions, because technically the character isn't saying, they're asking. They're obviously standard dialogue tags otherwise.

Attributives in dialogueKate, you're missing the point about strong dialogue. If you need to make it clear a character is mumbling, it doesn't need to be an attributive. It can be a declaration.

Jan6

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Attributives in dialogueUhm, can you really speak with a sigh? "I guess so," he sighed for example, is pretty much a physical impossibility.

Jan3

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Attributives in dialogueYeah, but ... they're never necessary. They're never a "better" choice than a transparent attribution that doesn't call attention to itself. If it is necessary, then it's just shoring up weak dialogue.

Jan3

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Attributives in dialogueAh, I completely object to them. They're distracting at best, which is why I'm concerned about the over-use of "asked."

What are the benefits of being a slush reader?Tor is kind of fast and loose -- they've even said their process is informal and they have two readers / editors, neither of whom is writing. Their parent, McMillan, however, doesn't accept unsolicited submissions. And signing a waiver is not signing away your copyright. It's acknowledging that you're on spec and that you don't know what the company already has in the works.

Jan19

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How many queries do you send to editors a week?Being that this site is not doing as well as it should in terms of daily visits / questions -- why not just edit the question and provide an answer yourself. You've got the rep for it. We need all the questions we can get.

What are the benefits of being a slush reader?Maybe you've not been paying attention. A lot of places use them, though it's much more common in television. It's so bad in writing for TV that when you write on spec, your spec script for say, the Simpsons, will never even go to the producers of the Simpsons even with a waiver but instead will go to the producers of Family Guy, who may then ask you to write a Family Guy script if you did a good job with the Simpsons script.